


icarus

by theboynamedcrow



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:22:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22029262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theboynamedcrow/pseuds/theboynamedcrow
Summary: Newly turned vampire Eiji Okumura watches life go by through photographs, inside the safety of a darkroom. He misses the sun a little less when he meets a boy named Ash.-(#BFSecretSanta2019 for @hitoshuraa on twitter.)
Relationships: Ash Lynx/Okumura Eiji, Ibe Shunichi & Okumura Eiji, Max Lobo & Ash Lynx
Comments: 4
Kudos: 72





	icarus

1\. the beach

Getting stabbed wasn't like he imagined. More precisely, he didn't realize he'd been stabbed at all until the mugger took the wallet from his pocket with extraordinary ease and he didn't have any strength left to struggle. There was blood pooling in his shirt, and suddenly he was on the cold, hard floor.

He thought about the article he had to finish for Max by midnight, almost ready in his drive -he'd probably be spamming his phone in a few hours from now. He thought about the old photograph he kept in his wallet, one of Griffin and him by the beach, their eyes small both from smiling and being under the blinding sun of Cape Cod. It was the last one they'd ever taken together, and the main reason he'd put up a fight against a knife wielding man in the first place. Hell, his brother would probably scold him for it if he was still here.

It was a dumb way to go. Apart from the photograph, he only had a twenty dollar bill in there. Oh, well.

The man shoved Ash's wallet in a bag and made his way out, leaving him for death. But before he could reach the corner, the sound of steps stopped abruptly. He heard struggle, and then deafening silence.

What he saw could be attributed to shock. Maybe blood loss was causing him hallucinations. Another man held the mugger like a ragdoll, white, sharp teeth sinking into the flesh of his neck as if it was made of pudding. The robber kept his lips parted, eyes glassy and lost, barely registering what was happening to him. He fell with a soft thud when the guy let him go.

Then, the guy's dark eyes were on him. He strolled to Ash's side and cradled him so gently for someone who was dripping blood from his chin. His face looked younger and rounder up close, too. And, through all the pain and dizziness, Ash could swear he looked terrified.

_I should be the one who's scared,_ Ash thought, already feeling his eyes heavy. He was beyond fear at that point, the pain becoming dull and far away. Perhaps that was a bad sign. He could feel the guy slapping his face, saying something about an ambulance and staying awake.

"Who are you...?" Ash whispered. He didn't get to hear the answer. It was cold. He thought about the photograph again, and passed out trying to remember the sound of the beach.

2\. second chance

Ash woke up before Max did. The man was sleeping on a chair in a weird position that would surely give him all kinds of joint pains. It made him look older than he actually was, and, although Ash would never admit it, he was glad to see a familiar face after all the madness.

Had it all been a bizarre comma induced dream? The pulsating pain in his torso was still there, so at least that much was real. He tried to sit up, the effort it took making him breathe loudly enough to make Max almost fall off his chair. He took a good look at Ash and rubbed his face, sighing in relief like he'd just dropped a huge sack of potatoes.

"Don't tell me you're going to cry, pops," Ash teased. Max laughed dully, pressing his lips in a way that made him fear he was actually going to cry. 

"Got enough strength to be a dick, guess that means you're alright."

"Takes more than that to take me down." He didn't mention how he was actually surprised to be alive, how he most likely wouldn't be at all if it wasn't for that guy. 'Vampire' still sounded too ridiculous even in his own head, but he also couldn't come up with any other term that made sense.

Max didn't laugh, this time. He rummaged inside his pocket and handed Ash his wallet. His expression was enough clue. He'd looked inside. That nosy old man. 

"At least your attacker didn't go unscratched. That bastard, you won't believe what happened."

"Police got him?" Ash figured it was easier to play fool.

"He was passed out near you, pale as a canvas, missing a lot of blood. Had two small incisions on his neck and according to the police he claims not being able to remember anything. Don't have to tell you what it looks like."

"It looks like you have a good article to write."

3\. fifth avenue vampire

Weeks passed and Ash went back to work. The wound on his side healed fast, but it left a noticeable scar. He had to answer some police questions before getting released from the hospital. No, he didn't see or remember anything after the stabbing; yes, he passed out right away. They didn't question him further, most detectives more concerned with fishing the bare minimum so they had something to write down on a report.

Max's article about the "Fifth Avenue vampire" became a hot topic for about a week, but quickly got drowned in the oversaturated media of New York city. Ash himself couldn't forget, though. That guy's face was still tattooed in his mind, surprisingly clear given the circumstances. Most of all, he remembered the worry in his eyes, as if it was him and not Ash bleeding out. A vague feeling of safety, of warmth, which directly clashed with the image of the sharp teeth gleaming under the moonlight. 

It was amusing, wondering what kind of face he’d make if he read the way Max described him in the paper. ‘A cold blooded vigilante’, ‘city ghoul’, or something along those lines. Ash didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise -Griffin didn’t raise a snitch, either.

And so he archived the memory, letting it rest at the back of his mind. 

(Ash really, _really_ thought it would stay there.)

“Ah, Ash. Forgot to tell you,” Max started, leaning over his monitor. Whenever he used that opener, what he really meant was that he hadn’t intended to mention it until it was too late for Ash to refuse. “I know you prefer to work solo, but I’ve got this friend from Japan. Kind of owe him a favor, and he had been asking for an internship spot for his assistant. It _is_ hard to find people for the night shift nowadays, you know.”

“You want me to train him?” Ash raised an eyebrow, not quite sure of what Max was trying to get at.

“No, no. He’s a photographer. He’ll be taking pictures while you run your next interview.” 

Max didn't give him time to reply. He slid out of the office and came back soon after, his arm around a young looking guy. Not just _any_ guy.

Oxygen left him. They locked eyes, and neither dared to say a word.

"This is our new intern, Eiji Okumura."

4\. fear

The subject this time was a woman. She'd poisoned her whole family with anti-freeze, then stabbed the husband five times for each woman he cheated with. She was a lawyer in a well regarded law-firm, and no one understood how she'd come to that point. 

These types of stories were never given to rookies, but Max insisted that Ash had a thick skin for that kind of thing, whatever that meant, and so he already had his fair share of gruesome cases in his writing portfolio -sometimes, when the news was particularly bizarre, he'd feel guilty and buy Ash dinner, or sneakers, depending on the rush. 

Eiji was different. While Ash conducted the interview with professional detachment, Eiji couldn't hide his troubled expression. He was shaking ever so slightly while setting up the tripod. The woman gave a smile that didn't reach her eyes and the shutter went off. After that, it was only a few more minutes before it was over.

They walked back in silence. Ash fished one of Max's sneakers from inside his pocket and handed it to Eiji. The boy's eyes widened in confusion, then he slowly accepted the treat.

"Thanks", he said.

"You looked pale," Ash explained.

I always do, these days, Eiji didn't say, simply nodding instead.

"I remember you. From that night," Ash admitted. Eiji stopped walking, holding the strap of his bag as if it would shield him.

"I figured. I was wondering when you'd say anything".

"I wasn't hallucinating, was I?"

Eiji shook his head. "I'm glad you're alright. I was scared I was too late." He shrunk when Ash stared for too long. His mouth, he was looking at his mouth. "What?"

"You had fangs".

"Oh? These?" As his smile widened, the white canines that were normal one second stretched into a longer, sharper shape. Ash made a face, and the vampire -because no denial was valid at this point- laughed. 

It felt like a fever dream.

"Neat, isn't it?" Eiji said.

In a movie, this would have been the part where he’d be jumped on, drained to the bone before he could run. In real life, this should have been the part where he tried to run in the first place, but somehow Eiji failed to raise his alarms. Maybe it was his printed t-shirt, maybe the tremble of his fingers as he took that first photograph. Maybe Max was right and he had a death wish. Either way, he couldn’t form a cohesive opinion, and out of everything he would have wanted to convey, Ash could only respond with:

"You're weird."

“Sorry.”

“I’m not asking for an apology.”

Eiji stared at Ash as if _he_ was the supernatural creature. Then a smile, calm beyond his years, adorned his lips.

(No, not a death wish. Maybe it was that smile, washing over his nerves like words written in the sand).

“You’re not scared.” The way he said it, there was both the wonder of a question and the certainty of an affirmation. 

Ash shook his head. “I owe you one.” 

“That night, it was actually my first time. Doing that kind of thing.” Eiji confessed, a tinge of remorse laced in his voice. “That’s not me, usually. I pay taxes like everyone else, I water my plants.”

Realization hit Ash, then, and it brought a smile to his lips. “You read Max’s article.”

“I think ‘ghoul’ was a bit too much.” 

5\. icarus

It all started with a jump, when he was eighteen. He was flying, flying, so high he could feel the kiss of the sun on his skin, and the cheer of the crowd was barely white noise. Eiji loved to fly -to reach that point where gravity seemed to lose its pull on him, floating above all that tied him. Up there, everything appeared so small. 

(“It looks like you’re doing it on your own,” Shunichi Ibe had told him, showing Eiji his picture, “like the pole has nothing to do with it”).

Landing was always the worst part. It had all the pressure and none of the excitement of taking off. One wrong move and he’d fall awkwardly, ruining the beauty of the jump and earning him a lecture by his trainer. One wrong move and he’d fall off the mat, like he did that day, and crack his skull open to near death.

He doesn’t remember how it went when he was given this new life, apart from the metallic aftertaste of blood. Ibe later confessed he asked the woman he was seeing at the time, because he couldn’t bare to see Eiji dead or bound to a bed. It was a matter of hours before he was out of his hospital bed, as good as new, but the warmth of the sun now felt like a curse, leaving painful lacerations on his skin, enough to harm him but not to kill him right away. Food still had taste, but nothing seemed to quench his hunger except blood -of chickens, rats, pigeons, anything. He was bound in a different way, for as many years as he was willing to.

And so, from that moment forward, Eiji spent most of his days in Ibe’s darkroom, watching the world go by through red-lit photographs. 

Ibe found him crying once, about a year later, when he was developing some pictures of his niece’s third birthday party. Little Akira was holding a balloon with one hand and trying to cover the sun with the other, unconcerned by the futility of it. It poked at something in Eiji’s heart, and the tears had just come naturally.

He asked Ibe why that blood hadn’t fixed everything. Not the wounds that weren’t visible.

The next day, the man talked to him about the city that never sleeps.

“I’ve got this old friend in New York...”

6\. ash

New York was like a dream, neon lights breathing life back into the night. There was a ‘24 hours’ everything at nearly every street. Supermarkets, bars, restaurants, game centers, laundromats. He missed the sun a little less, and eventually used up his savings to invest in a camera, a flash and a lens good enough for night photography. Back in Izumo, while he did learn the basics, he never had the motivation to experiment the way he did here, the way he did after he met Aslan Callenreese. Ash.

He didn’t know when his friend had become the main subject of his pictures. Those were his favorite, very different from his professional work for the newspaper. Most of them were not gallery material, but the honesty behind them made them charming. After long shifts, Ash would stay over at his flat sometimes -there were pictures of him barely awake in a bundle of sheets, of him smoking a cigarette while flipping burgers, of him with his old reading glasses threatening to slip off the bridge of his nose.

“Well, you’re unfairly photogenic,” was the excuse he used every time Ash questioned him. Eiji himself tried to believe that was all there was to it.

7\. lines

“Drink,” Ash insisted, holding his arm out towards Eiji. As it turns out, the blood of critters wasn’t enough to sustain him for long, and he was paler than usual, feeling hungover on nothing but tea. 

“Ash, don’t be stupid, I can’t-” A hand was placed on his forehead, so gently it only made Eiji weaker. 

“Jeez. You’re cold.” Worry marked a line between Ash’s brows. In fifteen years, maybe it’d become permanent. The thought of Ash being still being around by then made his lips curve despite himself. The other’s frown only deepened. “What are you smiling about?”

“You.”

Ash held his breath for a second and passed a hand through his hair. It looked like he wanted to smile as well, but it wasn't the right time.

"See? You're already delirious," Ash said, taking it upon himself to bite his own thumb before Eiji could continue objecting. He pressed the bright red blood against his lips.

Ash tasted like steel and sea salt.

  
8\. photograph

It took almost a year for Ash to learn about Eiji's pole vaulting accident. Even longer for Eiji to learn about what happened in Cape Cod, why vampires were far from being the scariest thing Ash had encountered. 

They rarely talked about things like these. Rarely said what they wated to say, really. Maybe it'd be easier after a couple beers.

"So what do you wanna do now? In the future." Ash asked after a silence that stretched for too long. "You can't work for Max forever, right?"

Eiji knew this, and yet acknowledging it head on hurt. He took a sip of his drink. "I don't know," Eiji admitted. "When I was human it was all about the rush, you know? Winning tournanents, getting good grades, choosing the right career. Now I do not have that sense of urgency anymore. Whether I do something about it or not, time runs without me."

"Huh," Ash said, his mind distracted with the concept of infinity. "Sounds kind of freeing. Not that I'd want to live forever, though."

"Ash!" Eiji scolded, elbowing him like he did every time Ash was sarcastic. 

"Calm down. I don't have a death wish. Just wouldn't know what to do with so much time."

"Well, you're just a kid," Eiji said, using that big brotherly tone of his. "The world is bigger than Cape Cod. Than New York, even."

"You're a kid yourself. Vampire bullshit aside."

Eiji hid his face between his knees, making himself smaller.

"To be honest, I don't know what I'll do with so much time either. In my eyes, some things seem like they'll go on forever, even though it's only me."

"Like what?"

"Like you."

Ash's heart ached with longing. This was the first time admitting what they meant to each other, and it already felt like a goodbye. Eiji must have seen it on his face, because he reached for Ash's hand, letting their fingers interwine. 

"Can I kiss you?" Eiji pleaded. Ash nodded, letting their distance melt into nothingness.

Eiji himself was like a photograph. In five, fifteen, thirty years, he'd still be looking just as he did then, in that rooftop, under the faint glow of the stars and the neon lights. Time ran differently for both of them. Ash was aware, but right now, he wanted the moment to stretch indefinitely, to frame it so that he could come back to it anytime he wanted, like the picture in his wallet.

"You wont like me when im a wrinkly old man," Ash said, once they broke apart. Eiji laughed.

"Thats not true! I'll be an old man myself. Here." Eiji pointed to his heart.

"God. You'll be a geezer who looks like a fresh faced college student. I bet it'll get to your head."

"Maybe. But you'll be a hot old man. Like Clint Eastwood."

Ash laughed into his fist, his shoulders rising and falling with ease. Eiji never regretted not having his camera ready more than in that moment. It would be dawn soon, and he wondered how the picture would look with the morning sun outlining Ash's golden hair. He considered staying until then -it was worth a few sunburns, but Ash would definitely scold him.

"We should get back inside," Ash said, as if he read his mind, already getting on his feet. Eiji nodded, following behind him. "See you later?"

"See you later, Ash." 

**Author's Note:**

> Mortal/Inmortal couples make my soul ache and I'm here to drag you all with me. :'D
> 
> (Happy holidays @hitoshuraa, hope you enjoy it!)


End file.
